You Are Rear-Ended, But Insurance Blames You?

Transcript: You’re rear-ended in a car crash, but the other driver’s insurance claims that you’re partly at fault for that crash.

Hi, I’m Indiana personal injury attorney David Holub.

Usually when you think of being in a rear-end collision, you think that the driver who rear-ended you is 100% at fault. But insurance companies don’t always think that way.

Why would an insurance company say that you’re partly to blame?

The insurance company wants to pay the least amount that it can possibly pay on any given claim, so it will look for ways to hold you partly responsible for a crash even when it seems like it is senseless to try to tag you with fault. For example, if it was snowing and icy they might argue that, “Well, you weaved from one lane to another and slipped and slided from one point to another, and the driver behind you couldn’t tell what lane you were going to be in.

And therefore, they just couldn’t control themselves and they crashed into you.” Or maybe the collision will be at night and you’ll hear the defendant’s insurance company say, “Well, I don’t think your lights were on.

We couldn’t see that you were in front of us because you didn’t have your tail lights on. And so, our client is not really responsible 100% for this collision.” Or maybe they’ll say you were in one lane and signaled to go into another lane, and then stayed in your lane, and so they couldn’t figure out where exactly you were going and they ran into you.

So it’s somehow partly your fault. In Indiana, as long as the other party is 51% at fault or more, you can recover. Who makes the determination on fault? Well, the jury makes that determination if there isn’t a settlement. So it’s ultimately a decision left up to the jury and the court if the parties don’t settle.

Bottom line: don’t get alarmed if the insurance company tries to blame you or say that you’re partly at fault, even if it’s a rear-end collision. We’ve dealt with many such situations and a lot of times we can cut through the nonsense and get the case settled for a good and fair, reasonable amount. We invite you to view the many other informational videos that we have on our website.